This invention relates to a swath treating attachment for a swather and to a swather including such an attachment.
Swathers are arranged to cut a standing crop and to confine that crop into a narrow row or swath of the crop material which is laid on the stubble behind the swather as the swather moves forwardly across the ground.
One problem which arises with swathers in relation to fluffy or high bulk crops such as alfalfa, canola and flax is that the swath is not in any way compressed and tends to stand high on the stubble thus making it very sucsceptible to blowing or moving in the wind. One solution to this problem is to attach a swath roller behind the swather so that it is pulled across the ground behind the swather and runs along the swath to assisting compressing or condensing the swath onto the ground and into the stubble to make it more resistant to wind damage. Swath rollers of this type are shown for example in U.S. Pat. No. 3,731,468 (Blumhardt) and Canadian Patent No. 599,761 (Hellegards). Such rollers are however a major problem in the handling of the swather in that it becomes impossible or very difficult to reverse the swather or to change direction while the roller remains properly positioned on the swath. There is a great resistance from the farmer therefore to use devices of this type.
A number of devices have been proposed previously for mounting at the rear of a swather for guiding the formation of the swath into various different shapes and examples of these devices are shown in Canadian patent No. 500,670 (Russell) and U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,803,821 (Peacock) and 4,217,746 (Cicci). These devices do not however solve the problem set forth. U.S. Pat. No. 4,532,941 (Gauthier) discloses a deflecting device for straw issued from a combine. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,144,679 (Akers) and 1,844,860 (Lindgern) disclose swathers of the type in which the header can be lifted but are not relevant to the present problem.